Informational Compression, Observer Saturation, and Cognitive Blocks

Observation and inference across cognitive, artificial, and physical systems rely on the compression of informational states. While compression enables abstraction and efficient representation, excessive or improperly regulated compression can lead to stagnation phenomena characterized by reduced exploratory capacity despite continued informational input. Within the Informational State Dynamics (ISD) framework, this work introduces observer saturation as a critical regime in which compression stabilizes internally generated informational representations. Above a saturation threshold , such stabilization gives rise to cognitive blocks, defined as non-pathological informational equilibria that restrict access to alternative state trajectories. The proposed formulation is observer-agnostic and applies uniformly to biological cognition, artificial agents, and physical information-processing systems. The model yields falsifiable implications concerning adaptive compression thresholds, saturation-induced overfitting, and the necessity of informational reset mechanisms to restore exploratory dynamics.